▬▬▬ time, devourer of all things
AT FIRST, people did not believe the news.
The king has fallen!
And unto to his brother as well!
They assumed it was a ruse by which the officials were covering up their own incompetence and attempting to lull the dangerously explosive mood of the populace. People remembered too well when the word had been that the murderer had arrived for Kemi. This time fear had set its jaws too firmly into their souls.
The people heard that the murderer was a woman. A one who once was an angel of the gods.
What was, even more, contemplating that this murderer had a hallowed beauty—for indeed you seemed a saint to everyone who had seen you, yet not entirely, afterward, now that you were undead—what hope was there of escaping you, a murderer and a cursed spirit?
They dragged you and put you in prison, then a place where the king's prisoners were confined. No one was with you, no one even showed you kindness and never granted favor in the eyes of the prison warden.
You had no characteristics as a human being, thus they starved you, slowly putting death to your soul. You lacked a source of nutrition . . . And at such, you soon died.
Yet, it was not an issue, for death was just a change of condition to you.
You were caged in this foul dungeon, where hideous criminals were also placed. The corners stank of human manure, the corridors of urine, the beams stank of waste and rat droppings, the unaired cells stank of stale dust, the wooden beds were greasy. And from the cells with blood-filled prisoners came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the pungent of rotting teeth, from their bellies as the onions, and from their bodies, they were no longer very young, came the stench of tumorous disease.
While the whole nation was gravely engaged to choose a new king; the former king's death caused distress to the people. This time, by now, you had died at least twice.
Hunger and agonizing torture: mostly the reasons for your death.
It was the demand of so many people.
They devoutly wished for your death, especially they knew no better course than to go to their sacred temples and pray. The husbands took their wives and children with them, praying together, eating, and sleeping in the temples; they did not leave during the day themselves.
Yet it seemed like starving you wouldn't keep you dead.
Behold, the people cried:
DEATH TO YE WHO WAS CURSED!
BEHEAD HER!
They dragged you to the guillotine stage, that stage of death. The ones who went before you were gnawing in fear. Who wouldn't? The eyes of those sorrowful serfs that were about to meet the afterlife.
Heaven or hell.
There was no certainty unless there was salvation.
It haunted and haunted and haunted. It gave you unrelenting thoughts on how fragile human lives were, especially in the hands of death. Though you easily accepted that you had been facing death in every second of your life.
There was nothing in your mind as they placed your head on the lunette of the guillotine. The roar of the crowd was unceasing. You rested your eyes upon the bloody planks and onto the basket where lied the severed head of the ones who went before you. Surely, in this execution ground was not for the faint hearts. There was no peace found on those hallowed faces; a tragic life was meant to have a tragic end.
How sorrowful.
You taunted in the mind.
You had experienced death, an excruciating way you could imagine, thus dying by the guillotine didn't scatter your thoughts away. You then wondered, if in this undetermined final moment before the blade, would you be free from the thorns of your curse?
You doubted it.
Then, you began to hear the sounds of the blade whirring down.
You felt something snapped clean on your head, a quick pain . . . and then nothing.
Yet your regeneration crafts were working well.
Thus,
You died.
And lived again.
A breath entered you, and you came to life. Your tendons had connected back to you and made flesh come upon your open wound and covered it with skin.
It was beyond the grasp of doubt.
Then there was silence. And the quieter it became, the more you could hear. What would you do to your contemptuous existence? You were far from happy about it, and for a while, you wore a vague expression. You had no uncertainty that people who witnessed this display became more eager to kill you.
Utterly nonsense.
No matter how you wanted to, you couldn't die. You would never die.
No ever wanted to live forever.
It must be out of your utmost hopelessness, a new desire rose to your chest. Another hope. Another faith.
You were once upon a priestess: a maiden who would call and perform for the gods.
Maybe . . . Just maybe,
"Thine gods couldest save thy soul."
You wanted to be gone . . . Somewhere, somewhere you were fated to rest.
But, lo! The people admonished in a loud cry:
KILL HER! KILL THE BEAST! KILL THE DAMNED WITCH, A BRIDE OF THE DEVIL!
And they did kinds of torture as numberless as the sinners themselves—crushed under a gigantic rock, pecked by a monstrous bird, and grind in the jaws of poisonous serpents.
You still lived, nonetheless, committed to seeing a miracle. You were dreaming awake. And in your dream, behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. It rejoiced your heart seeing the angels ascending and descending on it.
What a beautiful dream! You could laugh.
You weren't welcome in the heavens.
What was even more ludicrous was that the hell would not catch you with its eternal fire.
As the hundreds of people gathered in the macabre pavilion, the unrest of the churning crowd was so menacing.
HANG HER UPSIDEDOWN!
PUT A STAKE IN THOU HEART!
BURN HER! BURN THOU WRETCHED UNDEAD!
Such a satirical repugnance beyond descriptions.
It should be, yes. Malevolent witchcraft should be punished by fire, and church leaders and local people demanded it so.
Then be it so.
The soldiers started gathering the woods and put them into piles.
Oh, the people looked at you: the one who was impaled upsidedown like a bat, your body pierced by long wooden stakes and flogged by sharp irons and arrows.
They yearned for your death was turning to desire, rapturing your soul with immersing, spiraling curse. They felt themselves drawn to kill you, a spawn of the devil. A frenzied, despairing force came to you, a riptide no human could contain.
On hearing this command, one of the conscripts, the torch held high, stretched out his free hand, and whipped the large wooden stake. The torch crackled and flickered and cast its red gleam. Being lanced between your chest, cruelly tied and chained, your long black hair burst into flames, and your clothes were nothing but ashes. You could hardly keep from crying out.
The flaming execution was just a verse of heat and light, gracing the audience into a brilliant set of a lifetime.
The fire engulfed your entire being. The wood planks and dried bushes blew aside, then clouds of smoke swirled heavenwards, stark white against the blackness of the night, and finally, a shower of sparks spurted aloft with such terrifying force. Even the spectators felt the searing waves. Still more horrible was the color of the flames raging skyward, it was as though the sun itself had crashed to earth, spewing its heavenly fire in all directions.
The people had heard your cry and lament, now they could only gape in mute awe at the horrifying spectacle. In the firelight that bathed you from head to toe, your every feature was an ugly, wrinkled face. Eyes that were wide-staring, contorted lips, and withering flesh: all drew a vivid picture of despair, the terror, and the sorrow that traversed your heart. Such anguish—oh, dear heavens, save thy soul.
You felt the scorching all over your flesh accompanied by the excruciating pain. Your muscles would shrivel from the heat. The billowing smoke would suffocate you, and it was most likely the intoxication would kill you.
The noblewoman in chains—ah, people would never have the courage to describe in detail what you looked like. The pale whiteness of your upturned face, choking on the thick smoke. It was all so cruel, so terrible! At one point when the night wind rushed down from the mountain to sweep away the smoke, people could see clearly of you: the sight against a flaming background of red flecked with gold dust, gnawing at your gag, writhing as if to snap the chains that bound you.
It was enough to make the audience's flesh creep. It was as if the tortures of hell were being pictured right there before their eyes.
The crowd cheered when they could see slowly fading away. Your skin and flesh were now charred and burnt, and if they would close, one must be able to see your bones peering through.
You began to lose consciousness as your body began to falter.
Oh, such bitter earth you were born in. It could be so cold.
Why . . . Why you were forsaken?
The people rejected you.
The heavens rejected you.
The hell rejected you.
Was there even a place on earth for you?
Then the people sang their praises and worship their gods and goddesses, for they were able to defeat a beast in human guise.
They had set you in this execution square, burning you to the bones, to your death. It was full of ashes, ashes that were very dry and faded into grey. They burned you into dust; flame to ashes, from ashes to earth.
Could, in your fragmented state, these ashes live?
In your hopelessness, you made a prophecy or a cursed speech in a way.
O, ye dry ashes, hear the word of thou priestess:
LIVE!
It was activated, either your prophecy or curse, soon you uttered a command aloud that was reinforced with cursed energy.
You commanded, then there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and your every dust and matter came together, ashes to ashes. And when you were able beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon you, and the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in you. Thus you said unto the wind:
Come ye from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon thee slain that thine mayest live.
And the breath came into you, and you lived, and stood up upon your feet, and faced an exceeding great army.
The sudden eruption of renewed fear among the populace had trounced you. You lived again, and it disgusted them. They did not want to regard you as a human being, but only as a cursed spirit to be slaughtered.
They set about to storm the provost of your death bed, even the guards could not do to barricade the stand and the mob forced forward. They had formed a circle around you, twenty, thirty, many people. Soon the circle could not contain the mull, they began to push, to shove, and to elbow, and each of them trying to be closest to the center.
And then all at once, they lunged at you—the demoness—pounced on you, threw you to the ground. Each of them wanted to tear you apart, wanted to remove a piece of you. They tore away your hair, your skin from your body, they plucked you, they drove their nails onto your flesh, and they attacked you like retarded hyenas. But your human body was tough and not easily dismembered and had great difficulty accomplishing it.
And so, the flash of knives soon followed, thrusting and slicing, and then the swish of axes and cleavers aimed at your joints—hacking and crushing your bones. In a very short moment, you were divided into pieces, or even more. Later that night, your life had disappeared utterly from the earth.
Not an issue, not in the least. When your executioners found their way back together after killing you, they were catching their breaths. Someone would huff loudly, or spit out on your fragmented bones, or kick a leftover shred of your flesh into the flames. Then they thought, they were capable of anything that horrible. And they were amazed but confused that it had been so very easy for them that they did not feel the tiniest bite of conscience.
It should be that way. You should die. You should die.
But on the contrary! All of a sudden there were delightful, bright flutterings in their dark souls. They were uncommonly proud; the one they were most disgusted of had died.
Though it was the same for you. The people themselves, every one of them, you were disgusted by them.
It was true when they said that the real murderers were not monsters, they were humans. And that was the most frightening thing about them.
Curse them. Curse all of them people.
It was foolish to ask the gods for help.
Foolish, yes, such foolishness.
To what greater gods could you lay your forehead on the ground? You only lived on a borrowed time from the gods you would never see—every living did . . .
That abrogation of beings had never played their roles,
for you were the one who would save your soul.
If you could hold time on your hands, ripping it out of the deepest abyss on your chest, it would not be too late to spend eternity dying.
Scavenging thoughts had ripened on you and the scent of decay had lingered on you. Cracking bones, teeth falling, settling on the dry ground.
Just enough flesh was revived and settled on your lips . . . Thus you smiled.
Your old smile lined.
Maybe you could lend them yours—your time.
You did mean to tell them, but it was already too late; your presence was scattered in the air and it had flittered in their ears, whispering soft curses of yourself and made them wish to live a long life.
Say, do you hate this world?
Yes . . .
Yes.
You hated the humans.
Diabolical sense of power had immensely seethed on you, born out from your unfathomable anger and hatred. And now finally, you became aggressive, where you lost it and became one with the greatest evil: psychotic, snarling, and bargaining. This journey might have led you to darkness where you would forever be tormented by losing your humanity.
Devour them all, in the face of time.
A scoff erupted from your mouth, then a loud and menacing laugh, evoking an evil intent to your surrounding.
Perfectly, completely . . .
You were planning to erase this city from the face of this world.
Humans, animals, trees, forest, mountains, and bodies of water . . .
All of it . . .
ALL OF IT!!
You were more cruel than the plague, for one could flee before the plague, but not before you, a vengeful cursed spirit—and someone who was immortal. You possessed supernatural powers, most certainly in league with the devil, if you were not the devil himself.
You were aiming into oblivion—eliminating them up to the fundamental constituents of all matter.
A beginning with an end.
And on that one quiet, clear evening, whilst stretching out across the winding dunes of dust, you held your gaze into the infinite space, at the flowing clustered stars far away on the horizon.
You contemplated at first, yet still, you looked behind.
You knew it. You always knew . . .
For everything is already gone.
▬▬▬ 𝙀𝙉𝘿 𝙊𝙁 𝘼𝘾𝙏 𝙄
yeppp finally.
this is such a vague ending ik.
it'll get better... but i uhmmm
I wont promise , lmaooooooo
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